Presidents, coffee linked throughout history

U.S. Presidents and Coffee

In a few days many of us will be voting for the next President of the United States of America. It seems an opportune moment for a quick peek at the role coffee played in the lives of a few Presidents past.

First, a brief preface: one of the pivotal moments in U.S. history took place one night in December 1773, when a group of American Patriots stole aboard British ships in the Boston Harbor. Angry about the British tax on colonial tea they tossed a few hundred crates of the stuff overboard. This display of protest and theatrics was significant not only in the making of America, but also signaled the beginning of the country’s change from a primarily tea drinking nation to one where coffee was, and still is, king.

It didn’t take long for America to fully embrace the new “liberty tea,” as coffee was called in those politically charged days. President George Washington and wife Martha helped elevate the stature of coffee over tea by serving it at formal, state dinners. In those days it was the custom, after dinner, for men and women to retire to separate rooms for socializing. It was apparently Washington’s habit to briefly join the ladies for coffee and conversation. Fortuitously, it was also a coffee house that played a role in Washington’s own Presidential inauguration. During the ceremony it was discovered that no Bible was present upon which Washington might make his oath. A messenger was sent to quickly retrieve a Bible from the nearby “Old Coffee House,” so that the inauguration could be completed.

John Adams championed coffee in a letter to his wife Abigail. He recounted an experience he had had with a patriotic Inn Keeper who refused to make tea but would provide him with coffee. Adams concluded, “Accordingly I have drank coffee every afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned, and the sooner, the better.”

Thomas Jefferson enjoyed coffee so much, in fact, that he designed his own silver coffee urn, from which the drink was served at breakfast and dinner. He kept an inventory of green East and West India coffee beans at Monticello upon retiring from the Presidency, and reportedly went through a pound a day. He declared coffee to be “the favorite drink of the civilized world.”

One popular coffee-related quote comes from President Abraham Lincoln, who cynically said “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." Lincoln, ever the man of temperance and moderation, often had breakfast consisting of nothing more than a single egg, toast and coffee.

Lincoln’s General and later President himself, Ulysses Grant, considered coffee a vital staple for his men. While his troops often foraged for food during the Civil War, Grant made sure to include coffee along with ammunition and medical supplies in the fleet of wagons and supply trains that sustained his army.

Teddy Roosevelt is surely the President most closely identified as a coffee lover and connoisseur. He reportedly drank a gallon of coffee a day, and is popularly thought to have first spoken the phrase “Good to the last drop!” that became the well-known slogan for Maxwell House Coffee.

President Dwight Eisenhower was also a prodigious coffee drinker, consuming up to 15 cups a day. President Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was more measured in his coffee drinking, humorously declaring, "I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon."

Of the two candidates currently vying for the office, Barak Obama is reportedly not much of a coffee drinker, although when he does partake he prefers it plain, without cream or sugar. John McCain, more the coffee lover, is said to enjoy his coffee with cream or as a cappuccino. Make of that what you will.